India has a very large number of less literate smartphone users as per the Census data and TRAI records. Less-Literate in this context are users with education level not more than standard 6 in local language. Such archetype users are called as “Basic Users” in the Emergent Users classification. In addition to less literate users, there are few users who are literate enough but not have enough cognitive ability to operate the smart phone. Such as elderly users, normally above the age of 60 they are not comfortable enough in using the smart phones.
These basic users have specific challenges when it comes to cognitive tasks, such as, inability to do transfer of learning, inability to navigate deeper hierarchies of information architecture, inability of understand classification and information architecture. Typically, the basic users would use the phone to “receive a call” and “make a call” even though the smartphone is a computing device and uses the paradigm of computing for communicating with the user as compared to a telecom device. Thus the smartphone is closer to a desktop phone than a rotary or keypad based desk phone without any (or constrained) display.
The current state of art display of information architecture in Android based smartphones for control measures and their administration is complex and confusing. There are definite need of some kind of threat detection mechanism which can alarm the smartphone user in case of any adverse condition. Existing threat detection/reporting mechanism communicates threat in a language which is not easily understandable by the basic smartphone users. Words like “quarantine” may be beyond this user's understanding, and this adds to his inability to react to the reported threat.
The user is hence unable to do a threat modelling, risk assessment, risk mitigation and respond to the various security risks of a smartphone. This exposes the basic user to a variety of risks (unsafe practices of sharing via non-certified mechanisms like ShareIT, or content via Bluetooth) which the user is unable to comprehend, assess and respond. So, the challenge exists at the tri junction of information architecture which is complex, in a foreign language, for a specific domain of security, the cognitive abilities of an emergent user's archetype (Basic User) and Usability of interface.
Hence there exists a need to change the information architecture mechanism based on the modelling of the basic user archetype and have a just in time computer of the threat model and information communication to the user.